During the closing session of COP30, the representative of the Holy See – the governing body of the Vatican – was booed. That reaction was triggered by his statement requesting that any mentions of gender should be “understood as grounded on the biological sexual identity that is male and female”.

The comments followed a heated debate that had threatened to derail talks on the new Gender Action Plan (GAP) in Belém, stirring concerns that growing political pressure in the wider world to roll back advances on gender issues had seeped into the UN climate process.

Gender was a hotter-than-usual topic at this COP. Negotiators were tasked with agreeing a new GAP – a document to guide how gender features in climate decisions and action over the next 10 years, including balanced participation in climate talks, ensuring that climate projects consider different gender needs in their implementation, and collecting data that is broken down by gender.

Part of a broader work programme on gender, which was renewed during COP29, work on the GAP started at June’s mid-year talks in Bonn. That produced a text containing 99 brackets, denoting issues to be resolved. As disagreement among parties multiplied in Brazil, the last draft made public during COP30 had 496 brackets, making it a small miracle that a final version of the GAP was approved at the summit.

COP30 fails to land deal on fossil fuel transition but triples finance for climate adaptation

The most controversial issue was the definition of gender, which the Holy See, Argentina, Paraguay and Iran wanted to refer to as “biological sex”, reflecting their concerns about trans and non-binary people. One draft version of the text included a footnote added by each of those countries marking their objections. None of them made it into the final decision.

While Russia did not submit its own footnote, Climate Home News understands that it pushed hard to replace the term “gender” with “women and girls” and “men and boys”. During its intervention at the closing plenary, Russia’s delegate said his government works to strengthen the institution of marriage, which it understands as “a relationship between a man and a woman”.

Another thorny issue was “sexual and reproductive health”, a term that did not appear in the final text. The Holy See was among those that fought hard to exclude it. Archbishop Giambattista Diquattro, the head of delegation, said in an interview with Vatican News that tackling this topic was “a diversion from the real issue under discussion”, adding that “the inclusion in the text of sexual and reproductive rights, which include abortion”, is something the city-state could not “in any way accept.”

“Cruel” intrusion into climate debate

Partway through COP30, as the rows over gender surfaced, women’s rights organisations denounced the situation at a press conference.

“We’ve always had fights on the Gender Action Plan… but this is different. This is trying to actually push women back by having this binary definition,” said Mary Robinson, former Irish president who is now a member of the Elders. “It’s so cruel. I mean, it’s actually unbelievable that this would enter into our space.”

Bridget Burns, executive director of the Women’s Environment & Development Organization (WEDO), said it felt like a coordinated backlash – and it wasn’t limited to the gender negotiations.

Argentina and Paraguay also raised objections to definitions of gender in the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) negotiations. But they didn’t get what they wanted there either.

“The outcomes we got in the JTWP decision are the most ambitious from a rights and inclusion perspective ever,” said Anabella Rosemberg, senior advisor on just transition with Climate Action Network International, noting that the protestations by specific countries on gender would only be added to the UN climate summit’s report. “They didn’t get what they wanted, which was a footnote in each decision.”

Had that happened, it would have posed “a very serious threat to the process”, said Rosemberg. Burns said allowing definitions on what words mean for individual parties to creep into the formal decision texts could have set “a bad precedent”.

Claudia Rubio Giraldo, associate for policy and programmes at WEDO, said that such resistance to human rights language shows how important advocacy is – and advocacy groups should be ready to act when negotiation rooms that were previously “progressive points of discussion” become “battlegrounds” on human rights in climate action.

Nonetheless, noted Burns, this was the first time sexual and reproductive rights had entered a gender draft, albeit in brackets.

And she pointed to a deliverable in the final GAP document that asks governments to submit the findings of national assessments, including on “health, violence against women and girls, and care work in the context of gender and climate change”.

“We’re hopeful that [this] gives us the opportunity for countries who are making progress on this to actually share their solutions,” Burns added.

A GAP without money

On finance, however, campaigners were disappointed with the outcome. They had pushed for women to be given direct access to funding – and for gender to be addressed as part of the climate finance negotiations. Yet, even at a COP where one of the main wins was a tripling of finance for adaptation by 2035, there was little progress on funding for “gender-responsive” work.

Burns described the talks as “a massive failure” on that front. But she pointed to the COP29 decision to renew the Enhanced Lima Work Programme on Gender, which says that the Green Climate Fund, the biggest UN climate fund, should “strengthen the gender-responsiveness of climate finance”, and facilitate access to climate finance for grassroots women’s organisations.

In 2022, they received just 4% of government aid spent on adaptation. On mitigation efforts to reduce emissions, that number dropped to 2%.

Burns said advocacy groups will also push for finance across broader areas like tax, trade and debt to intersect with gender needs and unlock more funds for climate programmes targeted at women.

For now, she said, it is important to ensure COP30’s progress is protected and that the agreement on the GAP in Belém in allows for “focusing on solutions and ways in which we can both enhance climate action and gender equality without having to renegotiate our rights every single year”.

The post “Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat appeared first on Climate Home News.

“Coordinated backlash”: Activists say COP30 gender spat reflects wider threat

The decade-long alliance between developed countries led by the European Union (EU) and the developing countries most vulnerable to climate change – including small island states and the world’s poorest countries – frayed at COP30 in Belém, with both sides expressing disappointment.

On the penultimate day of talks, the EU said it would only offer more finance to help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change if there was an agreement to strengthen and speed up implementation of national climate plans, including a transition away from fossil fuels in the decision text.

This approach angered several negotiators from developing countries, who said efforts to cope with extreme weather and rising seas were too important to be traded off in this manner.

After COP, Least Developed Countries (LDC) negotiator Manjeet Dhakal told Climate Home News that adaptation was “not something to trade”. His native Nepal, for example, needs funding to put in place measures like early warning systems for flooding from glacial lakes and river floods, he said.

On the other side, EU negotiators accused climate-vulnerable countries of not giving strong enough support to Europe’s push for a roadmap away from fossil fuels.

Danish climate minister Lars Aagaard told a post-COP podcast in Danish that small islands and others had only supported the EU “in a half-assed way”.

This signals a weakening of the close relationship between the two sides that was cemented at COP21 in 2015 when they stood firmly together in the push for the Paris Agreement to include the lower global warming limit of 1.5C, as partners in what was dubbed the “High Ambition Coalition”.

Adaptation and fossil fuels linked

In Belém, after two weeks of late-night talks, governments at COP30 could only agree to a vague goal of at least tripling adaptation finance by 2035 and – instead of launching work on a fossil fuel roadmap – to create a “Global Implementation Accelerator” which may or may not include such a roadmap at some point in the future.

To get things started, Brazil’s COP30 president said he would draft a voluntary roadmap outside of the UN climate process.

Developed countries resisted a more ambitious call to triple adaptation finance by 2030 to $120 billion a year. The EU noted that an overall climate finance goal – of $300bn a year by 2035 – had been agreed only last year at COP29 and said they did not want to set an additional goal outside of its scope.

At the same time, a coalition of around 80 countries was pushing for COP30 to agree to launch a roadmap away from fossil fuels. This coalition included both developed and developing nations – particularly many LDCs, small islands and Latin American nations.

On the second Friday morning of the talks, the EU’s top climate official Wopke Hoekstra linked the two issues, telling a closed-door meeting of ministers: “if we deliver on the mitigation [emissions reductions] here together, yes you can ask the EU to move beyond its comfort zone on the financing of adaptation”.

Later that day, the African Group’s lead negotiator Richard Muyungi put out a statement saying that “some want [tripling of adaptation finance] deleted unless we trade it for a fossil-fuel phase-out deal. That is unacceptable. Adaptation is a right, not a bargaining chip.” He added: “This is an implementation COP, the continent has compromised enough. Africa will not leave with nothing.”

Thibyan Ibrahim, a negotiator for the alliance of small island states (AOSIS), told Climate Home News that climate-vulnerable countries were “disappointed and frustrated that developed countries aren’t taking the initiative to fill the gap in leadership after the withdrawal of the US”.

“While they [the rest] are not leaving the Paris Agreement, it is frustrating to see rolling back of ambition and commitments, rather than stepping up and becoming a partner of choice for developing countries,” the Maldivian negotiator said.

“Half-assed” support from small islands

On the other side, some EU negotiators expressed disappointment in the LDCs and AOSIS, accusing them of not being vocal enough in supporting a roadmap away from fossil fuels – something both groups deny.

Lars Aagaard, the climate minister from Denmark who led the EU’s negotiations, told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR) in Danish that “those who normally support us” like the “small island states etcetera” only stood up for us “in a half-assed way” on moving away from fossil fuels. He added that the EU could “feel that the alliances that were there before were not so strong”.

He speculated that the US may have played a role in making countries that would normally support the EU on fossil fuels “conspicuously silent”. In October, after US threats to restrict visas and sanction nations, many Caribbean countries voted with the US and Saudi Arabia to postpone a green shipping deal at the International Maritime Organization in London. The US did not send an official delegation to COP30.

Former Colombian environment minister Susana Muhamad told a Climate Home News event halfway through COP30 that “we have countries in the Caribbean that have been leaders on the finance that cannot speak any more globally about [it] because they have been threatened” by the US.

Some negotiators and observers have said the EU could have got more support for a fossil fuel transition roadmap if the bloc had come with a compelling offer on adaptation finance. But Aagaard dismissed this argument, telling DR in Danish: “There is not a day on Earth when I give any money to Tuvalu or Jamaica, then the Saudis think ‘Oh, how sweet they are… now I vote for us to get off fossil fuels’.”

Some LDC and AOSIS negotiators also denied that their support for a fossil fuel transition plan would have been stronger with more adaptation money on the table. “Not necessarily,” said AOSIS’s Ibrahim while the LDCs’ Dhakal said both mitigation and adaptation are important, and Sierra Leone’s environment minister Jiwoh Abdulai insisted “the two are not mutually exclusive for us”.

But Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said that at both COP29 and COP30 there had been a “disenchanted vulnerable group of countries”, adding “this dynamic is likely to persist if Western nations remain distracted from climate finance”.

“Faced with diminishing climate aid from the West and the availability of cheap solar panels from China, they are likely to find the latter far more attractive,” he added.

The lesson Aagaard said he had taken from COP30 was that Europe needs to pursue its own interests more relentlessly and not be naive. “The thing about being the moral one and doing the right thing and hoping that others will follow suit – that dream has pretty much been wrecked for me,” he told DR.

The post EU alliance with climate-vulnerable nations frays over finance trade-off appeared first on Climate Home News.

EU alliance with climate-vulnerable nations frays over finance trade-off

Welcome to Carbon Brief’s China Briefing.

China Briefing handpicks and explains the most important climate and energy stories from China over the past fortnight. Subscribe for free here.

Key developments

China called for ‘strengthened’ climate cooperation

‘URGENT ACTION’: As the COP30 climate talks in Brazil drew to a close (see today’s spotlight below), world leaders gathered in South Africa for the G20 summit, where China’s premier Li Qiang urged countries to “strengthen ecological and environmental cooperation”, “take urgent action” on climate issues and “accelerate” implementation of COP30’s outcomes, state news agency Xinhua said. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post said that, due to the US being a “no-show”, “China and its allies drove the consensus” leading to the final G20 leaders’ declaration, adding that it “delivered major wins for African countries on debt, climate and critical minerals processing”.

MINERALS REGIMES: The G20 declaration included a call to ensure critical mineral value-chain resilience, highlighting “geopolitical tensions, unilateral trade measures inconsistent with [World Trade Organization] rules, pandemics or natural disasters” as potential risks, Bloomberg reported, in a “seemingly veiled reference to China’s sweeping export curbs”. Bloomberg also quoted Li defending China’s need to “cautiously manage” critical-mineral exports for military use, adding that China launched a “green mining initiative with 19 nations” at the summit.

MINING TIES: Meanwhile, China and South Africa agreed an “initiative for supporting Africa’s modernisation” pledging to “assist Africa in achieving a fair, just, open and inclusive green and low-carbon transition”, according to the Communist party-affiliated People’s Daily. The text also “encourages countries to strengthen international cooperation on green infrastructure and green mining”, including in “building responsible, transparent, stable and resilient critical mineral value chains”. Reuters said that, in a meeting between the Chinese and German government, Li “pitched stronger ties” in the face of tensions over rare-earth minerals. The UK has “rolled out a critical minerals strategy designed to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers by 2035”, Reuters also reported.

‘SPECIAL’ CONNECTION: Li highlighted China and Russia’s “special, strategic” cooperation in the “oil, gas, coal and nuclear sectors” in talks with Russia’s prime minister, Reuters said. However, at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in Moscow, Li said governments “should work together to advance green and low-carbon transformation”, the People’s Daily reported. Executive vice-premier Ding Xuexiang also said at the China-Russia energy business forum that the two countries should “deepen cooperation on energy transition”, the People’s Daily also said. Russian oil and gas giant Gazprom is “pushing ahead with plans” for the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, according to the Financial Times, which added that Chinese officials have yet to confirm the project.

Coal covered October’s power surge 

COAL BACKUP: A heatwave in southern China in October caused a surge in power demand, with “coal-power plants picking up the slack amid slow growth in renewables”, Bloomberg reported. This could “make it difficult” for the country to see a plateau or reduction in carbon emissions this year, it added. David Fishman, principal at the consultancy Lantau Group, theorised on Twitter that this could have been due to the rigidity of China’s power-purchasing mechanisms, availability of coal power on spot markets and poor wind-power generation in October.

SLOWING APPROVALS: China’s permitting for new coal-fired power units is on track to hit its lowest level since 2021, according to new research from Greenpeace East Asia. Around 42 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity was permitted in the first three quarters of 2025, it said, noting that the amount of new coal power approved between 2021-2025 was still “more than twice the total permitted” between 2016-2020. Separately, Swiss bank UBS estimated that power demand in China will grow 8% between 2028 and 2030, said finance outlet Yicai.

RENEWABLES RISE: Meanwhile, 13GW of new solar capacity was added in October, as well as 9GW of wind and 8GW of thermal power, reported Bloomberg. According to energy news outlet BJX News, from January to October 2025, China added 253GW of solar, 70GW of wind and 65GW of thermal power, mostly coal.

Managing industry emissions

MARKETS EXPAND: China has approved plans to expand its national carbon market “via a test system” some time this year, reported Bloomberg, effectively confirming that steel, aluminum and cement will be covered in the mechanism by the end of 2025. The government has also released its third batch of methodologies for its voluntary carbon market, all of which are projects related to the country’s oil and gas sector, according to energy news outlet China Energy Net.

SUPER-POLLUTANT PLAN: Separately, the government issued two plans restricting the manufacturing of products using the potent greenhouse gases known as hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and a particular type of hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC), such as refrigerators, freezers and insulation foam boards, reported state news agency Xinhua. An interview with an environment ministry official on the state-run China Environment News noted that the policies “clarify” that the HFC controls “include exported household refrigerators and freezers”, although it “excludes vehicle-mounted refrigerators”. Experts had previously told Carbon Brief that exported products were not covered by an action plan to enhance China’s HFC controls published in April that governs these two policies.

ALL-IN ON HYDROGEN: “Green hydrogen” capacity is being “ramp[ed] up”, said Bloomberg, with several projects coming online in the past few months “after Beijing signaled its continued support” for the sector. The government has “backed [hydrogen] tech with several pilot projects this year” and allowed the sector to access “carbon credits to help with funding”, it added. China has also developed its first “coal-to-chemicals project integrating green hydrogen”, which is forecast to produce 71m cubic metres of hydrogen per year, according to Reuters. Meanwhile, the hydrogen industry has also launched its first “anti-involution” initiative, pledging to avoid or prohibit actions such as “below-cost bidding”, “false planning” and “blind pessimism”, said economic news outlet Jiemian.

Spotlight 

How China approached COP30 endgame

As negotiations at COP30 entered their final stages, China’s positions in several of the debates proved to be central to discussions.

Below is an excerpt of our coverage of what China said, wanted and got at COP30. The full article is available on Carbon Brief’s website.

Climate finance

One of China’s key priorities – the provision of “financial resources” from developed to developing countries under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement – proved to be a significant sticking point in negotiations.

With discussions on climate finance looming large, China proposed during the second week the development of a “practical roadmap for implementation”, predominantly by developed countries, of the $300bn per year “NCQG” climate-finance goal.

China delegation head Li Gao said this would help “avoid blame-shifting…and prevent further erosion of trust” on climate finance.

In the end, while COP30 resulted in a plan within the mutirão decision to develop a “two-year work programme on climate finance” that included a mention of Article 9.1, it was situated within the “context of Article 9…as a whole”. This means that developing countries’ contributions also fall under its scope.

“The EU needed to spend its biggest leverage [at COP30] to adjust the adaptation-finance goal,” Kate Logan, director of the China climate hub and climate diplomacy at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), told Carbon Brief.

EU-China non-alignment

There was a marked lack of EU-China coordination at COP30 overall, despite efforts to develop a united stance in July.

Multiple observers told Carbon Brief that early negotiations featured a rancorous back-and-forth between the two on the ambitiousness of their respective 2035 emissions reduction targets.

Another point of contention between the two was the role of “unilateral trade measures” (UTMs), which the “like-minded” bloc of developing countries (LMDCs, of which China is a member) asked to be included on the agenda.

Japan, the EU and others argued that other fora would be “more appropriate” for discussions. The EU also implied that China’s critical-mineral export restrictions could also fall into the scope of discussion, should the item be included.

Ultimately, China and others secured its inclusion in the mutirão text and agreement on three annual dialogues on UTMs, culminating in a “high-level event” and report in 2028.

China was also among the countries present for the COP30 presidency’s launch of an integrated forum on climate change and trade, although Carbon Brief understands that it has not formally joined the platform.

Meanwhile, a mention of critical minerals in a draft just-transition text – a potential first for COP – was deleted by the final version.

Joseph Dellatte, head of energy and climate studies at the Institut Montaigne, told Carbon Brief: “Even though the EU is worried about China’s trade measures on [critical materials], it still wants to strike a deal with Beijing.”

Fossil-fuel fracas

China also faced significant pressure on its approach to mitigating emissions.

It was not among countries supporting the idea of a roadmap away from fossil fuels as part of the COP30 outcome. It also opposed calls to emphasise the 1.5C temperature limit, instead “requesting the entire Paris Agreement temperature goal [which includes “well-below” 2C]…be mentioned”.

While the final mutirão text does emphasise the 1.5C limit, fossil fuels were not explicitly mentioned.

Arguments by China that the UAE dialogue should not become a “mini-GST [global stocktake]” also seem to have been considered, with no mention of an annual agenda item in the final outcomes.

The mutirão text “sends a red alert” on the consensus on fossil fuels, Greenpeace East Asia’s global policy advisor Yao Zhe told Carbon Brief.

But Li Shuo, director of ASPI’s China climate hub, said that, despite this, China’s prior agreement to transition away from fossil fuels would “guide its domestic energy reforms”.

Watch, read, listen

VISUALISING CHANGE: Greenpeace East Asia published its work with Chu Weimin, who has used drone photography to document how China’s clean-energy transition is reshaping “landscapes, communities and people’s everyday lives”.

CLIMATE ENVOY’S DEBRIEF: Climate envoy Liu Zhenmin explained why China felt a fossil-fuel roadmap was “unfeasible”, in a wide-ranging interview with the Paper held at the end of COP30.

NDC AMBITION: The Outrage + Optimism podcast spoke with Wang Yi, vice-chair of China’s expert panel on climate change, among others, during week two of COP30.

MISCONCEPTIONS: Wang Binbin, founding director of the Climate Future Global Innovation Lab, explained the thinking behind China’s climate strategy – and how mistranslations underplay its ambition – for China News.

60

The number of nuclear reactor units in China, once the newest unit at Fujian Zhangzhou nuclear power plant – the world’s “largest Hualong One nuclear power base” – completes final checks, Jiemian reported. The unit began delivering power to the grid on 22 November.

New science 

Climate warming and forest expansion significantly enhance China’s forest methane sink
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology

China’s forest methane sink “significantly increased” over 1982-2020, according to new research. The paper used a database of “forest methane fluxes” to produce a map of changes in forest methane uptake, finding that rising temperatures, decreasing soil moisture and forest expansion were the main drivers of the increased methane sink. The authors said their study “highlights the positive contribution of climate warming-drying and afforestation to methane sink enhancement”.

Quantifying global climate change impacts on daily record-breaking temperature events in China over the past six decades
International Journal of Climatology

A new study found that summer record-breaking high-temperature events occurred more frequently in China than “theoretically predicted”, while winter record-breaking low-temperature events occurred less frequently. The authors carried out statistical analysis of record-breaking events, using daily surface-air temperature data, collected over 1960-2023 from around 2,300 meteorological stations across China. They found a “more pronounced acceleration” in the frequency of high-temperature record-breaking events after the year 2020.

China Briefing is compiled by Wanyuan Song and Anika Patel. It is edited by Wanyuan Song and Dr Simon Evans. Please send tips and feedback to china@carbonbrief.org 

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The post China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up appeared first on Carbon Brief.

China Briefing 27 November 2025: COP30 wraps; Climate and critical minerals at G20; Coal use up